Monday, March 2, 2009

Lost City recently delivered the very sad report that Manny's Music will be vanishing from 48th Street where it has been since 1935. Brooks spoke to Sam Ash, who said, "Music Row as you know it will be gone in just a few years."

The block is one of the last authentic pieces of an older New York and a haven from the tourist mash of Times Square. When I used to work around the corner, I would walk this block just to get a little peace, stepping into the shops to look at the instruments, horns and strings I couldn't play but liked anyway.

I wrote here about Jon Baltimore, an old-school craftsman who remembered growing up on the Row, when major musicians played on the corner just for kicks. I saw signs recently that Baltimore has since moved his 37-year-old shop to another location.

It's been a while since I visited the block. All these photos are from 2007, so I don't know if these places still exist--but there were other old shops to explore, like Rudy's Music Stop and all the little places piled one on top of the other, their windows glinting with saxophones and trumpets.

Manny's, of course, is the jewel in the Row. It's the kind of place you think will always be there. When I took these pictures, I thought: When all these other shops are replaced by more Times Square junk, with condos and Duane Reades, Manny's will remain.

With its un-ending, floor-to-ceiling, star-studded wall of fame you could look at for hours, until your neck is kinked...

...and its many artifacts, like "Old Yellow," kept behind glass and described by Modern Guitars as "a beat-up Danolectro that was used by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and other customers to test-drive amps."

Worn and battered, handled by many famous and hopeful, Old Yellow could be a symbol for this street. To the makers of money, it's not much to look at, but it is purposeful, colorful, and it could tell you stories.

NYC is really DEAD. It's over, it's gone, it's history. Hipsters, California transplants, yuppies, boring "sophisticated" people. Who love Jamba Juice, Pinkberry, Red Mango, and chain store shopping DRONES. All the real NY'ers are moving to Florida or the West Coast. Many of them moved away 5 years ago.

"Jeremiah Moss does an excellent job of cataloging all that’s constantly being sacrificed to the god of rising rents." --Hugo Lindgren, New York Times Magazine

"No one takes stock of New York's changes with the same mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit as Jeremiah Moss... Even as the changes he's cataloging break our hearts a little, it's that kind of lovely, precise writing that makes Moss's blog essential reading." --Village Voice, Best of NY

“Jeremiah Moss…is the defender of all the undistinguished hunks of masonry that lend the streets their rhythm.” --Justin Davidson, New York Magazine

"One of the most thorough and pugnacious chroniclers of New York’s blandification." --The Atlantic, Citylab